CHAPTER II.
Of course Cornelius had gone on painting all this time. He finished his Stolen Child, painted two other smaller and more simple pictures, and he sent in the three to the Academy.
"1 don't see why you should always send your pictures to the Academy,"
said Kate; "I don't think it is fair to the other Exhibitions."
Cornelius confessed that the argument had its weight.
"But then you see, Kitty," he added, "I cannot do less; they behaved so well to me last year about that trashy Happy Time: it really was a poor thing, and yet see how well they hung it--they did not think much of it, but they saw that it promised something for the future. Yes, they really behaved very well--so well that though I am certain they will reject the two minor pictures and only take in the Stolen Child, I feel I cannot do less than give them the chance of the three."
"You are too generous," sighed Kate; "you will never get on in the world with those disinterested notions, my poor brother--never; besides, I put it to your sense of justice, now, is it fair to the other Exhibitions?"
Cornelius said perhaps it was not, but added that he really could not do less, and persisted in his original intention. I remember, when the pictures were sent off, that he said to me,--
"My little girl, let this be a lesson to you! Always do that which you feel to be right, even though you should be a loser by it: depend upon it, it is much better to feel generous than mean."
But when was generosity appreciated in this world? The Hanging Committee accepted the two inferior pictures and rejected the Stolen Child.
Cornelius was stung to the quick.
"If they had rejected the three pictures," he said, "I really could have borne it; I should have attributed it to want of room, or found some excuse for them. But to go and take the two inferior paintings, and reject the good one; to let it be thought--as it will be thought--by public and critics, that this is all the progress I have made since last year, it really is not fair."
"Not fair!" sarcastically replied Miss O'Reilly; "not fair, Cornelius! It is all of a piece with their behaviour to you from the beginning. I always thought you had an enemy there, Cornelius."
"But the Happy Time was accepted, Kate."
"Of course it was, just as the two little things have been accepted, to delude you and the public also with a show of impartiality of which you at least, Cornelius, are not the dupe, I trust. It is all jealousy, mean jealousy."
"It at least looks like it," replied Cornelius, sighing profoundly.
"Hanging Committee, indeed!" pursued Kate, whom never before had I seen so bitter and so ironical, "they deserve their name! Oh yes, hanging! Are their own pictures well hung? Oh dear no!--not at all--so impartial-- very! Suppose they were hung instead of their pictures--in a row--not to hurt them, they are not worth it--but just to let us have a look at them!"
In short, Miss O'Reilly was in a great rage; and if ever this unfortunate and much-abused body got it, it was on this day, for having rejected "The Stolen Child" of Cornelius O'Reilly, Esq.
The two accepted pictures fetched ten pounds a-piece; the Stolen Child was sold to a picture-dealer for forty pounds.
"Go," indignantly said Cornelius to his favourite picture as they parted,--"go, you are nothing now, but he who painted you will give you a name yet!"
Four years had now elapsed since Cornelius had set forth on the conquest of Art with all the ardent courage of youth; and Art, alas! was still unconquered, and the triumph of victory was still a thing to come. He had anticipated difficulties, sharp and brief contests, but not this disheartening slowness, this powerlessness to emerge from the long night of obscurity. It irritated his impatient temper even more than the rejection of his picture. He did not complain, for there was nothing resembling querulousness in his nature; but he brooded over his disappointment, and resentfully too, as appeared from what he once said to me--
"If they think they'll prevent me from painting pictures, they'll find themselves wonderfully deceived!"
I am not sure that "they" meant the Hanging Committee; I rather think it represented that vague enemy at whom disappointed ambition grasps so tenaciously. Whatever it signified, Cornelius kept his word: he painted, and harder than ever; but fortune was ungracious. Two charming cottage scenes which he sent in on the following year were accepted, it is true, but did little or nothing for his fame. One critic said "they were really very nicely painted;" another "advised Mr. O'Reilly not to be quite so slovenly;" a third found out that as in one of the cottages there was a fiddle, it was a gross plagiarism of Wilkie's "Blind Fiddler," artfully disguised indeed by the fiddle not being played upon, and of course none of the characters listening to its music, but not the less evident to lynx-eyed criticism; a fourth declared that Mr. O'Reilly was a promising young artist, who, in a dozen years or so, could not fail to hold a very respectable place in Art; and a fifth--one of those venal characters who disgrace every profession--sent in his card and terms. Kate wanted her brother to give him a cutting reply; he said there was nothing more cutting than silence, and lit his cigar with Mr. --'s edifying letter.*
[* A fact.]
"He does not complain," said Kate to me, "but I can see in his face there's something brewing."
I thought so too, and resolved to find it out. It was some time before I succeeded; but I did succeed, and one day, when Kate said with a sigh--
"I wish I knew what's the matter with that boy!"
I composedly replied--
"Cornelius wants to go to Rome."
"Nonsense!" she said, jumping in her chair, "what has put that into your head? Did he tell you?"
"No; but I am sure of it."
I spoke confidently; she affected to doubt me; but the same evening proved the truth of my conjecture. It was not in Miss O'Reilly's nature to turn round a thing, so, as we were all throe walking in the garden, enjoying the cool [air], she suddenly confronted her brother, and said bluntly--
"Cornelius, is it true that you want to go to Rome?"
He reddened, looked astonished, and never answered.
"Then it is true," she exclaimed with a sigh.
"Yes, Kate, it is, but how do you know it?"
"Midge told me."
"Daisy!" he turned round and gave me a piercing look. "Why, I never hinted anything of the sort to her."
"No, but she found it out; and what do you want to go to Rome for, Cornelius?"
"To study, Kate. I have been too homely, too simple, and that is why I am slighted; I should like to go, to study, to try the historic style: but where is the use to talk of all this?"
He sighed profoundly.
"The historic style," cried Miss O'Reilly, kindling; "Cornelius, you have hit the true thing at last: depend upon it you have. Of course you have been too humble! give them something bold and dashing, and let us see what they'll say to that! Go to Rome, Cornelius, go to Rome."
"The means, Kate, the means!"
"Bless the boy! As if I had not money."
"Oh! Kate! you have done more than enough for me as it is," he replied, crimsoning; "it makes my blood boil to think that I shall soon be twenty- five--"
"Nonsense!" she interrupted hastily, "will you go to Rome, study the great masters, see all that painting has achieved of most glorious, become a great painter yourself--or stay at home and plod on?"
His varying countenance told how strong was the temptation: his look lit, his colour came and went like that of a girl.
"Yes or no?" decisively said Kate.
"Well, then,--yes," he replied desperately; "I know it is mean, but I cannot help it, the thought of it has for weeks kept me awake at night, and haunted me day after day."
"And you never told me," reproachfully interrupted his sister, "and never would if Midge had not found it out!"
He eluded the reproach by asking me how I had found it out. I could not satisfy him; instinct had guided me more than knowledge; the word Rome, uttered with stifled sigh; an impatient declaration that there was nothing to be done here; a long lingering over old engravings of which the originals were in Italy, were the signs which, often repeated and united to my intimate acquaintance with every change of his face, had showed me the secret thought of his heart.